An online protest led by Google Inc. (GOOG)
and Facebook Inc. against U.S. anti-piracy bills illustrates how
Internet companies are changing legislative debate in
Washington.

Thirteen co-sponsors, eight in the Senate and five House
members, began withdrawing their support for Hollywood-backed
measures to combat piracy. Internet companies devoted home pages
yesterday to opposing the bills, threatening a traditional
lobbying effort led by the Motion Picture Association of America
that assembled bipartisan support for the legislation.

The movie and music industries want Google and online
services to block non-U.S. websites that peddle pirated movies
and counterfeit goods, while Internet companies say the bills
would promote censorship, disrupt the Web’s architecture and
harm their ability to innovate.

“It’s unprecedented,” Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard
University professor of law and computer science who serves on
the boards of bill opponents Electronic Frontier Foundation and
Internet Society, said in an interview. “You could see some
members of Congress saying there’s no percentage in it for me to
stick out my neck on something like this.”

The anti-piracy bills call for the U.S. Justice Department
to seek court orders forcing Internet-service providers, search
engines, payment processors and online ad networks to block or
stop doing business with non-U.S. sites linked to piracy. The
measures would let private copyright holders seek court orders
forcing payment and ad companies to cut off such websites.

Changing Political Process

A promise by lead sponsors of the bills to drop the
requirement for service providers to block websites, after
opponents said it may harm the Web’s domain-name system, failed
to stop Internet companies from protesting.

“These organizations have reinvented a lot of the ways we
live, how we connect, how we absorb media,” said Rogan Kersh,
an associate dean at New York University’s Wagner School who
conducts research on lobbying. “They’re now trying to reinvent
how we carry out democratic politics.”

Visitors to Google, the world’s most popular search engine,
were greeted yesterday by a black box covering the company’s
familiar icon, and a message that read “Tell Congress: Please
don’t censor the Web!” The message linked to a page outlining
Mountain View, California-based Google’s opposition and an
option to join an online petition urging Congress to reject the
legislation.

Congressional Sites Slowed

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia run by a nonprofit
organization where users contribute entries, shut the English
language version of its website for 24 hours to protest the
bills, displaying a blacked-out page that gave people contact
information for their elected officials.

“We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of
the Internet’s development,” Facebook Chief Executive Officer
Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the social network yesterday.
The message connects to a Facebook page outlining the company’s
opposition to the bills, with a link for people to contact
members of Congress.

News website Reddit, blog Boing Boing and video game site
Minecraft went dark in opposition to the anti-piracy bills. EBay
Inc. (EBAY), LinkedIn Corp. and Twitter Inc., opponents of the anti-
piracy legislation in Congress, didn’t close during the protest,
though Twitter CEO Dick Costolo responded to posts this week by
telling users to contact their senators.

Traffic to websites of House members doubled yesterday
under the increased protest volume, said Dan Weiser, a spokesman
for the House Chief Administrator’s Office. Some congressional
sites displayed error messages or were slow during the day,
signs of heavy usage.

Legislator Reversals

Co-sponsors who say they can no longer support the Senate
legislation as written include Republicans Marco Rubio of
Florida, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Orrin Hatch of Utah, John Boozman of Arkansas, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Kelly Ayotte
of New Hampshire as well as Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland.
Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, said in a statement yesterday he couldn’t
support the bill moving forward next week.

Republican Representatives Ben Quayle of Arizona, Lee Terry
of Nebraska, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Dennis Ross of
Florida and Democratic Representative Tim Holden of Pennsylvania
said they would stop backing the House measure.

Rubio said he switched his position on the Senate measure,
the Protect IP Act, after examining opponents’ contention it
would present a “potentially unreasonable expansion of the
federal government’s power to impact the Internet,” according
to a Facebook posting yesterday. The Senate has a procedural
vote scheduled for Jan. 24 on proceeding with its bill.

‘Abuse of Power’

The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Senate’s
measure are backed by the movie and music industries as a means
to crack down on the sale of counterfeit goods. Hollywood
studios want lawmakers to ensure that Internet companies such as
Google share responsibility for curbing the distribution of
pirated material.

The so-called blackout day of protest is an “abuse of
power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the
marketplace today,” Christopher Dodd, chairman of the
Washington-based Motion Picture Association of America, said in
a Jan. 17 statement before the online action got under way.

“It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the
platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally
skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their
corporate interests,” said Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who
served three decades in the Senate.

Lobbying Intensifies

The administration of President Barack Obama cast some
doubt over the legislation’s prospects on Jan. 14, saying in a
blog post that it wouldn’t support measures that encourage
censorship or disrupt the structure of the Internet.

The blog post, signed by three White House technology
officials, marked the administration’s most significant foray
into the fight between content creators and Web companies that
has been playing out in Congress.

Google and Facebook are boosting spending and their
Washington presence to cope with a growing list of issues,
including online piracy as well as consumer privacy and
antitrust. Google hired 19 outside lobbying firms last year, and
Facebook has two new outside firms, Senate records show.

Employees of television, movie and music companies have
been the top source of political contributions to Representative
Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who heads the House Judiciary
Committee, for his 2012 re-election campaign, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics research group. Smith introduced
the House version of the anti-piracy bill.

‘Turned the Tide’

Those industries’ workers were the second-biggest source of
donations to Senator Patrick Leahy’s last re-election in 2010,
center data show. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and head of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored the Senate bill.

Obama got $1.34 million in campaign donations from
employees of the computer and Internet industries since January
2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Obama
received $1.02 million from workers in the television, movie and
music industries in the same time.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who
opposes the anti-piracy measures, applauded websites that took
part in yesterday’s protest.

“This unprecedented effort has turned the tide against a
backroom lobbying effort by interests that aren’t used to being
told ‘no,’” Issa said in an e-mailed statement. He introduced
alternative legislation yesterday that would send complaints
about piracy by non-U.S. websites to the International Trade
Commission.